


Opus Number One

by RaeOfSunshine524



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28436763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaeOfSunshine524/pseuds/RaeOfSunshine524
Summary: Just. Soft, chill times. Also me being a music nerd and a big fan of Will knowing how to play the piano
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua & Will Parry
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15
Collections: His Dark Materials Discord Server Exchange





	Opus Number One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nerdyfangirl23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdyfangirl23/gifts).



It’s the sun that wakes Lyra up as she rolls over, slicing through the curtainless window and into her eye, making her grimace. Pan slips from polecat to mouse in order to burrow into Lyra’s pocket as she rubs at her eyes. Lyra had discovered no nightclothes in  Cittàgazze that looked anything like what she had worn, but Will had told her that in his world nightclothes were often the same as day clothes but bigger, and had found her huge striped shirts that were like tents on her. She liked them well enough; they were like her old nightgowns but with pockets to hide food and Pan in. Mind, sometimes in Cittàgazze Will and Lyra would fall asleep without changing, too exhausted by the day’s adventures.

“Where’s Will?” Pan wonders aloud.

“How’m I meant to know? I just woke up same as you.” Lyra points out.

“Can you hear that?” Pan asks, crawling out of the pocket and up onto Lyra’s shoulder as she sits up. In the city that’s so often silent, the strange sound sticks out to Pan.

“Hear what?”

“I dunno. Kinda why I was asking.” Pan tells her, jumping off her shoulder and landing on the floor as a red panda. He’s been a red panda quite often since arriving in Cittàgazze, and Lyra spares a split-second to wonder how she would feel if he settled as one. “Maybe it’s Will?”

“And how would Will make that kind of noise?” Lyra asks, tipping forwards onto her hands and knees to scrabble around for a pair of trousers. She catches hold of a pair of Will’s jeans first and drags them on, not bothering with shoes before padding down the stairs of the abandoned house. There are rather a lot of stairs in Cittàgazze, Lyra’s noticed. Very few of them with any kind of banister or railing, and most made of solid stone. Far more decorative than the stairs in Lyra’s world, whose only function was to...well, function, rather than add to the look of a building. But whoever had built this city had decided to put stairs  _ everywhere _ , even at the edge of the water. Lyra steps out onto the dusty road, head turning this way and that.

“Where’s the sound gone, Pan?”

“Down here.” He tells her. He’s already trotting off to the right, so Lyra follows him. She can hear a little of what he can hear now, a sound that is somewhat familiar, but she can’t place it. It doesn’t float or wobble through the air, it cuts through it cleanly. Some of the sounds are high and almost sound like singing, others low and rumbly.  _ Where’s Will?  _ It couldn’t be a Spectre. Spectres couldn’t sound so...good. “In here!” Pan calls. He’s several yards ahead of Lyra, not far away enough to pull but far away enough to see into the hotel the sound is coming from. Abandoned, like all the buildings in Cittàgazze.

Lyra steps into the house hesitantly, not wanting to run into any Spectered adults. They are not a pleasant surprise. They remind her of the children severed from their daemons at Bolvangar. She doesn’t know what happened to them. If they found their parents, if the Gyptians took them in. Some small part of her chest aches at the thought of the Gyptians, at little Billy Costa keeling over, unable to survive without his daemon. Farder Coram, trusting her whole-heartedly. Ma Costa, treating her more gently and more lovingly than any other woman had before. Perhaps that was what having a mother was like, having someone trust and love and care for you without question.

“Will.” Pan had fluttered, moth-formed, to Lyra’s ear to whisper the word, pulling her out of her rabbithole of thoughts. Pan’s right, Will is there.

“A piano.” Lyra mumbles. She remembers seeing one once, at Jordan. She must have been tiny then, three or four, bashing at the keys with Roger until his aunt had picked them both up at once and carried them all the way down to the kitchens. Apparently they had been ‘disturbing the Master’ and so the piano had been banished to his own office. But Will isn’t just bashing at the keys. These are practiced, precise movements, hands flowing from one end of the keys to the other without hesitation. Lyra has never heard anything like it before. It’s  _ wonderful _ . Some part of Lyra has a feeling that she shouldn’t interrupt him, but the rest of Lyra has very little control over her curiosity and rash impulses.

“You know music?” She asks, and Will’s perfect chord is ruined. Lyra doesn’t take the time to feel guilty about it, pushing onto the piano stool to sit next to him.

“I, uh, I used to get lessons. Had to stop taking ‘em a year ago, but...but I liked it.”

“Why did you stop?” Lyra asks, and she knows in an instant that this was the wrong question to ask. Will’s fingers lift off the keys and curl into his palms.

“Sorry.” Pan mumbles, head bowed.

“It’s alright. We...we couldn’t afford it anymore because Mum was ill.” Will explains slowly, waiting for the jabbing and the mocking. Pan wants to mumble another apology, but Lyra stops him. Her hand goes out to Will, settling on his shoulder.

“Could you show me? I’ve never been able to play any kind of music so well.”

This, as it turns out, seems to be the right question to ask. All the tension goes out of Will’s shoulders and his fingers straighten out again.

“Alright. If you want to.”

“I won’t make a mess of it like I do with the omelette.” Lyra assures him, making Will laugh. Lyra smiles in return. There’s a beat of comfortable, companionable silence, and then Will points to three different keys.

“Press those.” He tells her, and when she does she’s fascinated by the sound she produces. Three different notes that sound somehow perfect together, as if they’re three strands of sound being woven together like string to make a rope. Will plays five other notes across the piano that become other strands of the rope. 

Slowly, slowly, Will guides Lyra through the left hand part of a simple piece he knows off by heart. Pan settles across the top of the piano, watching their hands move as they repeat each phrase over and over, getting a little faster each time, a little louder as they put more pressure on the keys, until the sound of their music floats all the way out of the abandoned hotel and breaks the silence of Cittàgazze.


End file.
